FRANKFURT (Dow Jones)--An expert report the German government has commissioned to help work out the country's future energy policy comes to the conclusion that most of Germany's energy ...
A volcano on the Indonesian island Sumatra that had been dormant for more than four centuries has erupted for the second day in a row. Mount Sinabung was again spewing out towering clouds of ash on Monday, forcing the evacuation of more than 21,000 people. Some aircraft had to be diverted because of poor visibility. Villagers living along the slopes of the Sinabung in North Sumatra province have packed up their belongings and headed to emergency shelters, mosques and churches, Andi Arief, a presidential adviser on disasters, said. Their abandoned homes and crops were blanketed in heavy, grey soot, and the air was thick with the smell of sulphur
A volcano on the Indonesian island Sumatra that had been dormant for more than four centuries has erupted for the second day in a row.
Mount Sinabung was again spewing out towering clouds of ash on Monday, forcing the evacuation of more than 21,000 people. Some aircraft had to be diverted because of poor visibility.
Villagers living along the slopes of the Sinabung in North Sumatra province have packed up their belongings and headed to emergency shelters, mosques and churches, Andi Arief, a presidential adviser on disasters, said.
Their abandoned homes and crops were blanketed in heavy, grey soot, and the air was thick with the smell of sulphur
African lions are one step away from becoming an endangered species, and a measure designed to preserve them is to blame. A new study suggests that hunters who pay to shoot the animals are killing too many of the big cats. Seventy years ago, the kings of the jungle numbered 450,000. Now the lion population has dwindled to less than a tenth of that. In the 1980s and 1990s, African nations started to think an old practice might hold the solution to saving the lion: trophy hunting. They hoped that by allowing rich game-chasers to shoot a few animals, landowners would have an incentive to conserve lion habitats and keep the species alive while boosting their local economies. In the meantime, it became conventional wisdom to blame the decline on factors such as conversion of lion habitat for agriculture, disease, and killings by locals upset over lion attacks on people or livestock. But the newest research, to be published in an upcoming issue of Conservation Biology, shows that at least in Tanzania--home to more lions than any other country--that isn't the case. Led by Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, a team of biologists took a closer look at the diminishing lion populations in Tanzania over the last decade. The researchers analyzed the amount of game brought back by hunters from 21-day safaris, the only legal way to hunt lions in the East African nation. They discovered that from 1996 to 2008, the number of lions hunters bagged in Tanzania decreased by half. It's not that hunters are scarce: Sales of the wilderness treks have risen by 60% since 1998. And the hunters probably aren't deliberately shooting fewer animals either, according to geographer Brian Child of the University of Florida, Gainesville, who was not part of the study. "In general, if they're paying a lot of money, they're going to be hunting as hard as they can," Child says. This leaves only one reason the hunters are bringing in less game: There's less game out there to shoot.
African lions are one step away from becoming an endangered species, and a measure designed to preserve them is to blame. A new study suggests that hunters who pay to shoot the animals are killing too many of the big cats.
Seventy years ago, the kings of the jungle numbered 450,000. Now the lion population has dwindled to less than a tenth of that. In the 1980s and 1990s, African nations started to think an old practice might hold the solution to saving the lion: trophy hunting. They hoped that by allowing rich game-chasers to shoot a few animals, landowners would have an incentive to conserve lion habitats and keep the species alive while boosting their local economies. In the meantime, it became conventional wisdom to blame the decline on factors such as conversion of lion habitat for agriculture, disease, and killings by locals upset over lion attacks on people or livestock. But the newest research, to be published in an upcoming issue of Conservation Biology, shows that at least in Tanzania--home to more lions than any other country--that isn't the case.
Led by Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, a team of biologists took a closer look at the diminishing lion populations in Tanzania over the last decade. The researchers analyzed the amount of game brought back by hunters from 21-day safaris, the only legal way to hunt lions in the East African nation. They discovered that from 1996 to 2008, the number of lions hunters bagged in Tanzania decreased by half. It's not that hunters are scarce: Sales of the wilderness treks have risen by 60% since 1998. And the hunters probably aren't deliberately shooting fewer animals either, according to geographer Brian Child of the University of Florida, Gainesville, who was not part of the study. "In general, if they're paying a lot of money, they're going to be hunting as hard as they can," Child says.
This leaves only one reason the hunters are bringing in less game: There's less game out there to shoot.
RICHMOND -- An Albemarle County judge has blocked Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's quest for documents related to the work of a former University of Virginia climate scientist, ruling that Cuccinelli failed to show why he suspects the professor may have violated a state fraud statute.Circuit Judge Paul Peatross issued his ruling this morning, 10 days after hearing arguments in the extraordinary clash between the attorney general and UVa. Cuccinelli issued a "civil investigative demand" to the university as part of an inquiry targeting former UVa professor Michael Mann, a climate scientist who now works at Penn State University. The attorney general's office indicated it is investigating "possible violations" of the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act by Mann in obtaining five research grants while at UVa, where Mann worked from 1999 to 2005.
The U.S. harvests around 68 million metric tons of wheat each year. There are two ways to increase this amount: One is to change farming practices by, say, increasing the amount of cultivated or irrigated acreage. The other is to breed the crop to be more prolific by introducing attributes that make it mature at ideal times, resist fungal infections, and divert more energy into making grain. Starting in 1959, wheat yield increased by about 1.1% per year, thanks to these breeding efforts--a boost known as "genetic gain." But in 1984, a few scientists noticed that in the 10 previous years, the average yield improvement had slowed, indicating that genetic gain was potentially leveling off. Ever since, genetic gain has continued to steadily drop. To better quantify what was happening, Robert Graybosch, a geneticist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and C. James Patterson, a geneticist at Oregon State University, Corvallis, analyzed data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the last 50 years. They found that genetic gain began slowing down in the late '80s, as scientists had suspected, and now appears to have come to a halt. With current breeding techniques, wheat may finally have reached the upper limit of its potential yield, Graybosch says. "Now it's sort of reshuffling cards from the same deck." Why has genetic gain come to a standstill? One of the primary reasons, says Graybosch, is that pathogens are likely evolving more quickly than breeders can keep up with. Another possibility, says Kulvinder Gill, a wheat geneticist at Washington State University, Pullman, who was not involved with the study, is genetic bottlenecks. For example, "dwarfing" genes that allow the plant to divert more energy to producing grain are widely used to increase yield--but this also means that breeders have been ignoring nondwarf varieties, thereby restricting the gene pool. Selecting for varieties that are resistant to particular pathogens has created a similar bottleneck, says Allan Fritz, a wheat geneticist at KansasStateUniversity in Manhattan who was also not involved with the work. Directly altering the DNA of wheat--so-called genetic modification--could again spur genetic gain in crops, but Graybosch doesn't expect that anytime soon. The wheat's genome is very complex, he notes, and the public tends to frown on genetically modified foods.
The U.S. harvests around 68 million metric tons of wheat each year. There are two ways to increase this amount: One is to change farming practices by, say, increasing the amount of cultivated or irrigated acreage. The other is to breed the crop to be more prolific by introducing attributes that make it mature at ideal times, resist fungal infections, and divert more energy into making grain. Starting in 1959, wheat yield increased by about 1.1% per year, thanks to these breeding efforts--a boost known as "genetic gain." But in 1984, a few scientists noticed that in the 10 previous years, the average yield improvement had slowed, indicating that genetic gain was potentially leveling off. Ever since, genetic gain has continued to steadily drop.
To better quantify what was happening, Robert Graybosch, a geneticist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and C. James Patterson, a geneticist at Oregon State University, Corvallis, analyzed data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the last 50 years. They found that genetic gain began slowing down in the late '80s, as scientists had suspected, and now appears to have come to a halt. With current breeding techniques, wheat may finally have reached the upper limit of its potential yield, Graybosch says. "Now it's sort of reshuffling cards from the same deck."
Why has genetic gain come to a standstill? One of the primary reasons, says Graybosch, is that pathogens are likely evolving more quickly than breeders can keep up with. Another possibility, says Kulvinder Gill, a wheat geneticist at Washington State University, Pullman, who was not involved with the study, is genetic bottlenecks. For example, "dwarfing" genes that allow the plant to divert more energy to producing grain are widely used to increase yield--but this also means that breeders have been ignoring nondwarf varieties, thereby restricting the gene pool. Selecting for varieties that are resistant to particular pathogens has created a similar bottleneck, says Allan Fritz, a wheat geneticist at KansasStateUniversity in Manhattan who was also not involved with the work.
Directly altering the DNA of wheat--so-called genetic modification--could again spur genetic gain in crops, but Graybosch doesn't expect that anytime soon. The wheat's genome is very complex, he notes, and the public tends to frown on genetically modified foods.
Oh. That's right. Actually fixing a problem cheaply and easily doesn't count.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/30/bjorn-lomborg-climate-change-u-turn
Now he's clamouring for $100 bn a year to fight climate change.
I've been following his career, more in sorrow than in anger, for years. He's been through the following phases :
